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Where to find free art for a Frame TV — and any other TV

Samsung's Art Store is a subscription. The art itself does not have to be. Millions of works are in the public domain and available as high-resolution files from museums that paid to digitise them, and nothing stops you putting those on a television.

Updated For Google TV & Android TV

What 'public domain' actually means here

A work is in the public domain when its copyright has expired — in most of the world, the author's life plus 70 years. For paintings that generally means anything before roughly the 1900s is free to use. The museum's photograph of the painting is a separate question, but major institutions have explicitly released their scans: the Met, Rijksmuseum, Art Institute of Chicago and Getty all publish open-access images precisely so people can use them.

The sources worth using

  • Wikimedia Commons — the broadest collection, and where most other sites source from. Search the work, then take the largest resolution offered.
  • The Met's Open Access collection — roughly 490,000 images released under Creative Commons Zero.
  • Rijksmuseum Rijksstudio — very high resolution Dutch Golden Age work, free to download.
  • Art Institute of Chicago — a clean public API and open-access images.
  • Getty Open Content — paintings, drawings and photography.
  • NASA image library — not art exactly, but free of copyright and spectacular on a large panel.

Getting the resolution right

A 4K panel is 3840×2160. Anything smaller gets upscaled, and brush texture is the first thing to go. Aim for at least 1920 pixels on the long edge, and prefer 3840 where the museum offers it.

Aspect ratio is the harder problem. Almost no painting is 16:9. You have three options: crop it (and lose composition), stretch it (never do this), or mat it — put the painting inside a border so the full work is visible and the leftover screen becomes mount board. Matting is what a real framer does, and it is the only one of the three that does not damage the picture.

Doing it without a Frame TV

None of this needs Samsung hardware. Any Google TV or Android TV can display the same files — the difference is that The Frame has a matte anti-glare panel and a physical bezel, while a standard TV is glossy and black-rimmed. You can close most of that gap in software by matting the image and dropping the backlight to 25–35%, which is the single biggest factor in whether a screen reads as a print.

Art Frame TV does exactly this on Google TV and Android TV: it mats the image with a real bevelled passe-partout, and ships 30 images including seven public-domain masterworks, free, with no subscription.

Common questions

Is there free art for the Samsung Frame TV?
Yes. The Art Store is a paid subscription, but public-domain works from Wikimedia Commons, the Met, the Rijksmuseum, the Art Institute of Chicago and Getty are free to download and display, and the Frame can show your own uploads.
What resolution should Frame TV art be?
At least 1920 pixels on the long edge, ideally 3840 for a 4K panel. Below that the upscaler softens brush texture noticeably.
Can I use public domain paintings on my TV legally?
Yes, where copyright has expired — generally the author's life plus 70 years. Major museums including the Met and the Rijksmuseum also release their photographs of those works under open-access terms.
Do I need a Samsung Frame TV to display art?
No. Any Google TV or Android TV can display the same images. The Frame's advantages are a matte anti-glare panel and a physical bezel; the software side can be matched by matting the image and lowering the backlight.

Art Frame TV puts your photos and gallery classics inside photorealistic frames with real passe-partout matting, on Google TV and Android TV. Free, no account, no ads. See how it works →

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